


Image In Inverse

by Cthonical (Nellie)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Omega, Blood, Canon Compliant, Claiming, Knotting, M/M, Marking, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Scent Kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-17 19:03:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/870949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nellie/pseuds/Cthonical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will is an omega who has always suppressed his biology with drugs. Hannibal is pure alpha and not afraid to use that to his advantage, particularly when he talks Will out of his suppressants and Will's very first heat is scratching under his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Image In Inverse

“Did you just smell me?”

It was nothing, the barest hint of a sniff, but Will’s no stranger to having people try to smell him, even if it hasn’t happened in years, not since highschool, not since he started-

“You’ve been taking suppressants a long time,” Hannibal says in reply, and it isn’t a question. 

Will tenses, long-smothered instincts prickling up his spine and down to his palms. “I don’t think that’s any of your business. Especially not when you’re a...” 

“Psychiatrist.” Hannibal leans against his desk. “That’s the only thing I am that is relevant right now. And I think the possibility that the drugs are interfering with your coping mechanisms is one that needs to be examined.”

There are a lot of topics Will hates talking about. This one, particularly when effectively trapped in a room with an alpha he’s been trying to pretend he can’t sense even through the suppressed haze, is currently topping the list. “I really doubt it.” 

Hannibal raises an eyebrow. “Oh? What makes you so certain? Perhaps if your own instincts were allowed to fill the empty spaces within you, there would be less room for the unpleasant impulses of the ones you hunt.”

Will frowns and ignores the sick lurch of sense in his gut. “I don’t think you understand what you’re telling me to do.” 

“I understand better than you might assume. It’s not just omegas who have to learn to dance with their baser urges.” 

Their eyes meet, and even with all his empathy it’s impossible to imagine Hannibal Lecter losing the cool veneer of control that colours every gesture and expression. “There’s dancing, and there’s fighting. Dancing your whole life is a damn lot easier than fighting.” 

“One does not necessarily preclude the other.” Hannibal stands, and Will isn’t sure if he’s imagining the sudden edge of dominance in the air or if Hannibal has just managed to draw his attention to something he’s used to dismissing. “Consider it, at very least. It could be worth it.”

Will snorts, rubbing at his eyes beneath the edge of his glasses as he lets Hannibal walk him towards the door. “Sure.” 

He feels the casual touch of Hannibal’s hand on his lower back like a heavy weight all the way home.

*  
Blood soaks her brown hair a ruddy black as he slams her head down onto the concrete again, her face a twisted grimace of desperate fear and pain. He can taste it on the back of his tongue, delicious copper to match the slick touch of her blood on his fingers. She’s vital, glowing, and she can fill him up and make him feel so perfectly complete. 

Her blood-filled eyes roll up to stare at him, a last plea, and he tightens his grip on her hair and drags her up for one last vicious slam that will snuff that light from her eyes.

Will shudders awake, blinking clammy sweat from his eyes as his chest heaves and the familiar hum of his electric heater and the gentle snuffling of the dogs gradually steeps the flood of adrenaline. 

He can still smell her blood.

He staggers out of bed and into the bathroom, careful not to step on any sleepy tails. He throws his damp shirt onto the floor and stares at his face in the mirror, his face, but the shadows of splattered blood still linger there on his skin. 

Will splashes cold water on his face. Three deep breaths. Five seconds of calm. Almost enough to drag him all the way home in his own head, but he’s choked on this for so long now that he doesn’t have any delusional hopes of sudden happy clarity.

He’s about to take a dry towel back to bed when his eyes catch on the pill bottle in the bathroom cabinet, right next to his toothpaste. Twice every day after he brushes his teeth he downs one of the innocuous things, for so long now that it’s hard to remember what it’s like when his sense of smell and instinctual awareness of any alphas around him aren’t dulled into non-existence. 

Will digs his fingernails into his palms, takes another deep breath. Then he picks up the bottle and drops it in the wastebasket on his way back to bed.

*

Jack’s scent is less distracting than Will expected it might be, even marked over every surface in his office like it is. What is distracting are the frown-ridden looks Jack keeps giving him over the top edge of the case files they’re reviewing. 

Finally Will shoves the top files into his bag and adjusts his glasses. “If we’re done here, I have a meeting with Dr. Lecter.”

Jack’s head snaps up. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Will slows down, shrugging his bag onto his shoulder. “It was your idea.”

“Well, yes, but that was before...”

Of course Jack has noticed. Will shouldn’t be surprised, but it still makes his stomach flip to see actual evidence of the creeping changes in his own body as it settles back to normality. “Before what, Jack?”

His jaw clenches. “You’ve stopped taking suppressants. Hannibal is-”

“My psychiatrist,” Will mimics. 

Jack shoves his chair back and stands up, leaning over the desk. “You’re an unmated omega with no idea what you’re in for going off the meds. He’s an unmated alpha. Of course I’m suddenly a lot more concerned about you being alone with him.”

“I’m pretty sure I can handle myself,” Will says, but the words are hollow. He knows exactly how well he usually handles himself. The only question he’s waiting to answer is whether or not all the bundled baggage of being a mature omega is less destructive than the alternative.

“If you could handle yourself you wouldn’t be in this situation at all,” Jack calls after him as he walks away.

It only stings because it’s true.

*  
“He’s destroying the skulls,” Hannibal says, his fingers drifting over the photos spread out on his desk. “There’s a lot of hatred here.” 

Will shakes his head and turns away from the windows and the people on the street down below. Hannibal’s scent is slightly weaker on this side of the room, relatively, but it’s still overwhelmingly obvious in a brand new way that this is a _lair_ , the lair of a beast that could devour him whole if he let it. 

If he wanted it to.

“It’s violent, but it’s not hate.” He walks to the desk and drags a couple of the photos out of the spread. If he could he’d stop the unfamiliar warm prickling at the nape of his neck. Instead he tries to ignore it. “If he hated them, he’d destroy their faces, not just the backs of their skulls. He wants to look at their faces, into their eyes. It’s passionate, intimate, but strangling them isn’t enough to sate him.” 

“Cracking them open certainly is, however” Hannibal says. “In more ways than one. Semen was found at all the scenes?”

Will hesitates, swallowing down the hazy sensation of blood on his hands and a desperate, dying body bucking against him. “Yes.” 

“And ceasing your suppressants has not dulled your reactions to stepping into his psyche?”

The air feels thick and saturated with the smell of him, and there’s a sudden urge to ask if Hannibal smells like that to everybody not on suppressants or if it’s just another quirk for Will to hate his body for. “That has yet to be seen,” Will hedges. 

Hannibal leans over the desk to gather up the photos. “It will take time.” He doesn’t even pretend he’s not sniffing the air this time. “Your body will need more than a week to settle properly back into its natural state.” He tilts his head, subtly predatory. “Have you determined when your first heat will be?”

“No,” Will says, too quickly. 

“You ought to,” Hannibal continues. “That is not something you would wish to face unprepared.” 

“I wasn’t aware there was much I could do about it,” Will snaps, dropping down into the nearby chair. 

“There’s not. But you can make it a significantly unpleasant experience by pretending it’s not going to happen.” 

“It’s going to be unpleasant regardless.” 

Hannibal raises an eyebrow. “I think you will find that, with proper planning, you are very much mistaken.” 

Will digs his nails into the leather of the armrests, eyes fixed on one of the paintings on the far wall. But Hannibal is like a shrewd stray dog with a meaty bone once he’s set his focus on something, and dragging out this discussion is the last thing Will wants to do right now. “Alright.” 

“Truly all you need is privacy at the proper time and a trusted partner.” 

He can’t help the raw laugh that escapes him. “Because that’s so _easy_. What am I going to do, ask Jack if his wife minds me borrowing him for a few days? See if anybody in the lab is willing to do me an extremely personal favour?”

Hannibal considers him with cool, calm eyes, and Will knows what he’s thinking. But if even he isn’t going to say it out loud, then damned if Will is going to. “I need to get home,” he says, standing up to shove the photos and files back into his bag, steadfastly avoiding Hannibal’s face.

“Will.” 

Fingers brush his arm, and he shivers before he can bury the reaction. He stares at the woodgrain in the surface of the desk. 

“Perhaps the question you need to be asking yourself at this point is, given an option, which unavoidable set of feelings and urges you would rather sacrifice yourself to in order to banish the other.”

*  
The numbers on the alarm clock are glowing 3:14 when Will wakes up trembling and damp and horrifyingly _hard_ , cock twitching at the lingering rush of a body thrashing between his thighs as blood permeates the air. He sits up and digs his nails into his palms, tries to exorcise the horror from the dark corners of himself. There’s no way he’s touching himself like this. No matter how much his body tries to coax him, tries to trick him into how good it would feel to stroke himself with a blood-slick hand until he comes. 

Will squeezes his eyes shut, but there’s nothing behind his eyes except the vivid emotion of the dream. 

In the end, pain is better endured in a fast strike rather than a lingering test. Will’s fingers still shake as he inches them inside his shorts. Make it quick. Get it done so he can get to trying to forget.

He shuts his eyes again and drags in a shuddery breath... and a faint scent that isn’t blood sticks in the back of his throat. Will glances around the shadows on the bedroom floor, spots his clothes from earlier.

_Which urge would you rather sacrifice yourself to?_

The flannel of his shirt is comfortingly soft when he picks it up. He still looks at it like it might be dangerous for a long moment before sniffing at it deliberately. Coffee, canine, Jack, people he walked near during the day. Those scents are all better than imagined blood, but it’s the overlying scent of strong, unmated alpha that goes straight to his cock.

Will slides his hand into his shorts again. He remembers hitting puberty and jerking off for the first time over the smell of their lovely alpha math teacher and her pretty sundresses, going on the drugs a few weeks later. Most people give it a chance once they find out what they are, before they decide to live naturally or not. 

Will hadn’t wanted to give it a chance.

Now, though, Hannibal’s smell on his shirt is far stronger than his subconscious and its desire for blood. He curls his hand around his cock and bites his lip as precome slicks his fingers. If he could he’d keep the fantasy indistinct, faceless, but scents are too hardcoded to identity to allow him the illusion that it’s not Hannibal he’s thinking of. Hannibal’s hand on him, Hannibal’s voice murmuring in his ear, telling him to come, biting down on the nape of his neck as he does and gently scenting him along his shoulders and throat as he recovers.

Will comes with a bitten-off groan, embarrassingly fast. He quickly wipes himself clean with his shirt, tries not to think about the fact there’d been no blood on his mind to colour the orgasm. 

Just Hannibal. 

His dreams are mercifully empty for the rest of the night.

*  
Dusk is starting to darken the sky as Will adjusts his glasses again, watching the glaring lights of the new crimescene from his car. Jack’s a dark figure standing guard near the police tape, but Will taps at the steering wheel for another minute before getting out into the chill winter air. 

“Took you long enough,” Jack says, lifting the tape.

Will ducks beneath the line and shoves his hands in his pockets. “What have we got?”

“Another girl, same profile, same m.o. Only this one is so fresh her blood’s still warm. Already got people scouring the area, but maybe you can get something new off this one.”

They come to a stop at the mouth of a grimy alley, the floodlights illuminating every layer of forgotten filth and grit. There’s blood beneath the wet halo of the girl’s hair, not enough for her to have been killed here but enough, fresh enough, to steam the air by her face.

Will swallows and tries to ignore the very real taste of blood in the back of his throat. She’d been an alpha. The killer doesn’t discriminate, but Will has never been able to tell which a victim was from scent alone before. He sniffs at the air, nose wrinkling as he smells the come the killer left on the girl’s thighs. 

His stomach flips. 

“Are you with me?” Jack says, frowning. “You smell a bit off, you’re not--”

“No,” Will snaps, stepping forward. “Just feel a bit... sick. Is all.”

It’s not entirely a lie. He takes another slow step forward. He’s not in heat, not yet, even though he can feel his body edging closer to that squirming need entirely without his say-so. Unfamiliar, and yet he _knows_ it, just like he knows the thrill of a perfect kill without ever committing one. Will blinks at the crimescene. Right now it’s this kill that matters, and his fingers twitch as he looks down into the girl’s glassy eyes and sinks into the moment that killed her. 

Blood on his hands. The killer’s hands. The first bright scent of it is enough to twist low in his belly, shifting his knees to straddle her, slamming her head back down onto the concrete. Didn’t clean her up before he dumped her here, didn’t clean up himself. Doesn’t fear being caught for the dna to be used against him. Blood. Dripping. Smeared on his hands and across her hips and layered thick on his tongue as he licks his fingers clean and his stomach-

-heaves, and he stumbles towards the street just in time to vomit in the gutter rather than all over the crimscene. There’s still the smell of blood over the acid bile, and Will gags on it far worse than anything else in the air. People are moving around him, strange hands fussing over him, ghosts on the edge of a vision he’s not sure is his. 

“Give him some space!” Jack’s voice bellows. That feels real enough, but his fingers are still sticky with blood when he tries to wipe his mouth.

“Let me.”

Will looks up, the scent of familiar alpha overriding the blood and bile in his throat as a linen handkerchief is pushed into his face. 

“Breathe into that,” Hannibal says. “It’ll help.”

It’s Hannibal’s handkerchief, there’s no doubting that. It smells of more than just a cursory touch; warm with intimate undertones, like it’s kept close to Hannibal’s skin. The scent drowns out the sharp edge of the blood, dragging Will up from the mire enough to get a tenuous grip on his own body. 

“Your senses are not used to so much information at once,” Hannibal says, calm, as he slides his fingers around Will’s free wrist. “And you place yours under undue stress at the best of times. You will adjust, eventually.”

“Eventually,” Will mutters, distracted from the sour taste in his mouth by the firm pressure of Hannibal’s fingers against the sensitive scent point over his pulse. His stomach turns, again, an insistent warmth that pushes through the queasiness and makes his breath catch in his throat. Leaning up to press his nose to the underside of Hannibal’s jaw and bury himself in the comforting smell there suddenly feels like a great idea. Will presses his nose into the handkerchief instead, ignoring the pleasant shiver Hannibal’s scent draws down his spine. “What are you doing here?” 

Hannibal lets go of his wrist, apparently satisfied by his pulse. “Jack called me, concerned you were taking too long to arrive. He agreed I should come and ensure you are alright.” He tilts his head. “Which evidently you are not.”

“I’m fine, I just...” Will swallows, winces. “I could use some water.”

Hannibal nods and accepts the half-lie. “I’ll see what I can find.”

*

It’s late, well past midnight when Will gets home to the happy barks of his dogs. He doesn’t expect to sleep easy, but the sick lurch still hovering in his gut is muted by the odd soft, warm, _needy_ feeling Hannibal’s lingering scent turns over in his stomach. Instead of examining that feeling too closely he flips open an old wall calendar on his kitchen table and counts out the days, does the math. 

A little over two and a half weeks. The numbers make it real in a way that’s unavoidable, and Will rubs at his face with a sigh. His hands still smell a little like Hannibal, both scents shuffled together, and even though Hannibal is the last thing he wants to be thinking about right now it occurs to him that this is how he’d smell all the time if they were mated. If the first and last thing Hannibal did every day was scent him.

It’s better than thinking about blood on his hands.


End file.
